In a communication system that uses time interleaving and a form of repeat diversity such as frequency diversity, the receiver must collect channel metrics and perform deinterleaving and diversity combining. A prior-art method of doing this has required a buffer for the storage of all channel metrics, in addition to a buffer for the final metrics, those that have been deinterleaved and combined. The prior-art method utilizes memory inefficiently, because ultimately only the final metrics will be used in the demodulation and decoding, and the stored channel metrics will be discarded. The buffer of channel metrics is at least as large as the buffer of final metrics, and in most cases, much larger.
Thus, what is needed is a method and apparatus for facilitating an efficient deinterleaving and diversity-combining of a data signal. The method and apparatus preferably will substantially reduce the memory resources required to perform the deinterleaving and combining.